A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN

Exciting times past and ahead for Rugby League in the county, as the great game, founded in Yorkshire 125 years ago, looks forward to the opening of a dedicated museum and prepares for the 2021 Rugby League World Cup. Alice Bailey touches on the sport’s amazing achievements and groundbreaking goals going ‘prop’ forward.

Around 57 million people travel around the country to see their favourite sport or watch their team play each year. With day trips and overnight stays, they put more than 2.8 billion into the English economy alone.

A good chunk of that cash ends up in Yorkshire with world-class cricket, Premier League football and of course our home-grown sport: Rugby League. COVID-19 permitting the global spotlight will be on the county next year when it plays host to the 2021 Rugby League World Cup. 6 of the 18 host towns and cities are in Yorkshire, which is only fitting as the sport, which started in the county, has just celebrated its 125th anniversary. Debate still rages over the precise origins of the game of rugby. For many years William Webb Ellis was lauded as its inventor after claims he picked up a ball in a football game at Rugby public school and ran with it in the 1820s. To this day the trophy awarded to the winner of the men’s Rugby World Cup, the premier international rugby union competition, bears his name, despite most historians now agreeing it was probably an early example of spinning a PR story rather than a rugby ball. What is more certain, is the origin of Rugby League and its proud roots in Yorkshire in 1895, but how and why did it happen?

The rules of what we now know as football were formulated back in the 1860s but there were many different versions and some people weren’t happy with following the regulations set out with the founding of the Football Association in 1863. So, in 1871 a number of clubs playing the version of football favoured at Rugby School, which involved the handling of the ball, met to form the Rugby Football Union.

Despite its roots in the privileged world of private education, Rugby was hugely popular in the north of England especially in Yorkshire and Lancashire where it was a largely a working-class game. This is where the problems started with a classic north south divide.

Huddersfield v Halifax 1892 pre-rugby league credit: Huddersfield Rugby League Heritage

Huddersfield Rugby League Heritage - Team of All Talents (1914) credit Kirklees Museums and Galleries collection

The Rugby Football Union was founded on principles of amateur sport and didn’t allow players to benefit financially. The RFU simply refused, saying ‘if men couldn’t afford to play, then they shouldn’t play at all’. While this was all well and good if your parents could afford the fees at an exclusive school like Rugby, it was very different for the many working class and often Northern players. These young men needed to work to earn a living. Not only did this mean they were less able to train, it also meant that they had to be more cautious on the pitch to avoid injury, which would mean they were not only unable to work but also incur the risk of costly medical bills. This meant many players and teams in Yorkshire and Lancashire simply weren’t able to reach their full potential, and more and more clubs wanted to compensate their players for time away from work and for any injuries. Tensions increased as did the severity of the punishments dished out to clubs for so called “broken time” payments they made to working players and in 1892, charges of professionalism were laid against rugby clubs in Bradford and Leeds. The following year clubs in Yorkshire complained that an over-representation of Southern clubs on the RFU committee, plus the fact that meetings were held in London meant that their voices weren’t being heard, and they were proved right when an attempt to allow these payments was voted down. And like the prefect Yorkshire cuppa – change was brewing – with plans for the northern rugby clubs to break away from the RFU and form their own professional league.

On 27 August 1895, a number of prominent Lancashire clubs including Oldham, Rochdale St. Helens, Warrington and Wigan declared that they would support their Yorkshire colleagues in their proposal to form a Northern Union and 2 days later representatives of twenty-two clubs met in the George Hotel, Huddersfield to form the Northern Rugby Football Union.

There were a number of changes made to the game which made it much more spectator friendly. The sport continued to increase in popularity and began to grow into the one we know and love to this day.

And to make sure we continue to celebrate the sport’s birthplace there are now ambitious plans to create the first-ever National Rugby League Museum at the very site where the deal was done.

Closed since 2013 The George Hotel has now been bought by Kirklees Council and will become the focal point of a multi-million-pound redevelopment of Huddersfield town centre.

The council is partnering with the sports charity Rugby League Cares to deliver the project. It’s chairman Tim Adams MBE, said: “I am sure everyone in the sport will welcome this decision to establish the National RL Museum at the George Hotel…… a museum that will be the envy of sports around the world in a location that means so much to so many people.”

Councillor Shabir Pandor, Leader of Kirklees Council, said “This is absolutely fantastic news and

we’re really excited to get started and bring Rugby League home. It is so much more than a building to local people and to Rugby League fans across the world. This is where it all began for Rugby League and there is no better place to create a museum that celebrates and remembers the history of the game.”

The announcement has been welcomed by the Chairman of the Rugby Football League, Simon Johnson “It is high time that there is a National Rugby League Museum to celebrate our sport’s rich heritage. How fitting then, that, as we celebrate the birth of our sport 125 years ago, the location of that radical meeting, the George Hotel in Huddersfield, should be the chosen location.”

Work is due to start, aiming for an opening date early in 2024. But before then we can get our RL fix when World Cup games are played in Yorkshire next year in Doncaster, Leeds, Hull, Kirklees, Sheffield and York. It’s another historic Rugby League moment for the county as the pinnacle of men’s, women’s and wheelchair games all come together for the very first time.

Criss-crossing crisscross moors, mountains, historic towns and buzzing metropolitan cities, RLWC2021 will showcase not just the sport but the diverse, welcoming culture and all Yorkshire has to offer.

Above and below: The George Hotel Huddersfield